The year is 2021. No child has been born for twenty-five years. The human race faces extinction.
Under the despotic rule of Xan Lyppiat, the Warden of England, the old are despairing and the young cruel. Theo Faren, a cousin of the Warden, lives a solitary life in this ominous atmosphere. That is, until a chance encounter with a young woman leads him into contact with a group of dissenters. Suddenly his life is changed irrevocably as he faces agonising choices which could affect the future of mankind.

Portrait

P. D. James (1920-2014) was a bestselling and internationally acclaimed crime writer best known for her books starring poet-detective Adam Dalgliesh. She wrote nineteen novels as well as several short story collections and works of non-fiction. Her work has been translated into thirty-six languages, and has sold millions of copies worldwide. Among many international prizes, awards and honours, she received the highest honours in both British and American crime writing: the CWA Diamond Dagger for a lifetime contribution to the genre, and the Mystery Writers of America Grandmaster Award. She was inducted into the Crime Writing Hall of Fame in 2008.
Beyond her writing, she worked in the National Health Service and then in the Home Office for over thirty years, first in the Police Department and later in the Criminal Policy Department, and made use of all this experience in her novels. She served as president of the Society of Authors for sixteen years, and was a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Literature and of the Royal Society of Arts. In 1983 she was awarded an OBE, and she was made a life peer in 1991. She died in 2014.